But because it’s impossible to conceive a greater being that God he must exist in both reality and our minds. In Anselm’s view only a fool can therefore doubt the existence of God, because the ‘fool’ has the idea of God in their mind to doubt him,
McCloskey is reminding atheists the ways theists argue for their belief in God. He is reminding atheists the reasons they believe that there is no God. He feels atheism is superior to theism; however; I find that his opinions only strengthen my belief that there is a God. Proof, as he states, carries no weight for a theist. He is half correct in his statement as a theist does not believe in the proofs individually, but finds enough evidence in them to form the belief that God does exist; He is the creator of the universe, and He is morally perfect.
Recognising this reaffirms that God is more than we can ever imagine – he is ineffable, can never be described so we cannot say what they are not. Strengths of via negativa are that it allows things to be said about God without implying that the finite (humans) can grasp the infinite (God), it also asserts the claims of revelation, that God is good and then recognises goodness to be a human word and so must be negated by saying too that God is not good to
If God breaks this, then he is not being omnibenevolent (all good), which is another of his attributes. However lust is far from morally right, so God cannot experience it. Leading on from that, since God is confined to being morally perfect, he has no choice whether he is or not, he can’t be omnipotent. Another aspect of this argument is can God fear? We are either scared of the unknown (e.g death) or something more powerful than ourselves (e.g lions).
If God is all knowing and all powerful and all good, therefore god would not want us to suffer and not put evil on earth. I believe that evil and suffering does exist because of the simple fact that we wouldn’t know the difference between good and bad, sad and happiness, love and hate. We wouldn’t know to appreciate god and everything he does for us. God being an all tri-omni god would not put anything on earth that he knew we couldn’t handle. There are two varieties of evil, moral and natural evil.
In the face of the possibility that something is deliberately setting out to deceive him, he is left only with the knowledge that he is a thinking thing. From there, Descartes considers the possibility of the existence of God, and what precisely that would entail. (Beyssade) Descartes starts by pointing out that in order for any effect to occur, its cause must be in possession of the effect itself or at least an equal amount of ‘reality’. From this he concludes that “It follows from this both that something cannot arise from nothing, and also that what is more perfect – that is, contains in itself more reality – cannot arise from what is less perfect.” (Baird and Kaufmann 32) His example here is that a rock cannot be created by anything that does not contain
If God did create the difference between right and wrong then that means that for God, initially, there wasn’t a difference between to two. With that being said, it follows that it is not possible to say whether God is good or not. This is due to the fact that if right and wrong were God’s creation, then prior to his conception of the two ideas, they did not exist or apply to him. The writer then determines that it is unreasonable to assume that God has any relation to the creation of right and wrong while also saying that God is good. If God is assumed to be good, then all of his actions are good, and this would include the creation of right and wrong.
Since the beginning of time, the idea of a God or a supreme being existing has been debated and argued. One argument that supports the existence of God is the Ontological Argument. An Ontological Argument is an argument for God’s existence that begins with the idea of supreme perfection or unsurpassable greatness. The Ontological Argument can also be seen as the idea that God has placed within us a knowledge that God exists and cares for us. Anselm (1033–1109) had opposed an Ontological Argument that one understands God as a being and cannot conceive anything greater because God cannot be understood not to exist.
Second, he asks the following question, if God created evil and goodness, why can he simply make evil disappear? In a conclusion taken from the Euthyphro dilemma, this question demonstrates a limitation in God’s power, which is indicating a mayor flaw in the Divine Command Theory. Because the Divine Command Theory is based on faith, Mortimer, the main proponent of this theory, could find difficult to respond to John Arthur’s arguments. In other words, faith does not have a scientific explanation which makes it hard to be understood by some individuals. But one of Mortimer’s strongest arguments could be that the DCT is the only theory that explains and distinguishes between right and wrong in a simple and clear
So when we say ’God is good’, we need to know that we are using ’good’ in that sentence. In univocal terms this would be claiming that God is good in some way that humans are, Aquinas rejected this as he believed God to be perfect. Because of this, imperfect humans can’t be good in the same way that God is. In equivocal terms, this would mean that God is good in a totally different way to humans, Aquinas rejected that too. He argued that if people speak equivocally about God, then it cannot profess to know anything about him as it is saying that the language we use to describe humans or the experienced world around us, doesn’t apply to God.